Compliance Alert

The current federal minimum wage rate is $7.25 per hour. However, many states have adopted minimum wage rates higher than the federal rate. When the state rate and the federal rate are different, employers must pay their employees the higher rate.

Affected employers should review their employees’ pay rates and update their minimum wage poster notices as necessary to ensure compliance with local wage and hour regulations.

Download the following PDF for helpful charts and tables with wage rate information by state.

The tax bill that Republican lawmakers are finalizing would have wide-reaching effects on health issues. But the GOP still has negotiating ahead to get a bill that both the House and Senate will support. That hasn't stopped some party leaders from looking forward to additional plans to revamp programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

The Associated Press: Q&A: Tax Bill Impacts On Health Law Coverage And Medicare The tax overhaul Republicans are pushing toward final votes in Congress could undermine the Affordable Care Act's health insurance markets and add to the financial squeeze on Medicare over time. Lawmakers will meet this week to resolve differences between the House- and Senate-passed bills in hopes of getting a finished product to President Donald Trump's desk around Christmas. Also in play are the tax deduction for people with high medical expenses, and a tax credit for drug companies that develop treatments for serious diseases affecting relatively few patients. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 12/5)
Politico Pro: Tax Bill Would Trigger A Major Ripple Effect Through Health Care The Republican effort to overhaul the tax code could send shudders through the health care system, potentially reshaping Obamacare while altering critical financial incentives affecting everyone from medical students to corporations and retirees with chronic illnesses. (Cancryn, 12/4)
The Fiscal Times: 6 Critical Differences That Must Be Resolved in the Republican Tax Bills The Senate bill’s repeal of the Obamacare mandate saves about $318 billion over 10 years but threatens to destabilize the individual markets, resulting in higher premiums and millions fewer people with health insurance. While House Republicans aren’t likely to balk at including repeal in the final bill, it could still be a problem for Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a pivotal vote in the upper chamber, whose support for the final package could depend on Congress’s treatment of separate measures designed to stabilize the Obamacare markets. (Rainey, 12/4)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Perdue Says Further Health Care Changes ‘Absolutely’ Needed As House and Senate lawmakers open another phase of negotiations over a $1.5 trillion federal tax overhaul, some Republicans are emboldened about pursuing new cuts to the system of health care entitlements. U.S. Sen. David Perdue said Monday that lawmakers should “absolutely” seek changes to the Medicaid and Medicare programs to help maximize the impact of the tax cuts. He echoed other Republican officials who have suggested a push for more spending cuts should be in the works. (Bluestein, 12/4)

The House of Representatives recently passed the 21st Century Flood Reform Act, a collection of seven bills that would reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) until 2022 and establish a number of reforms. Many of the proposed changes focus on increasing the program’s financial viability, as the NFIP exceeded its borrowing limit of $30 billion during this year’s hurricane season.

Here are some of the key additions included in the recently passed bill:

Financial tools to help FEMA and the NFIP plan for their long-term needs

An option for businesses to opt out of flood insurance requirements after one year

Incentives for private flood insurance providers

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the proposed reforms would lead to $187 million in savings between 2018 and 2027. However, critics of the bill believe that the changes could increase the price of flood insurance in low-income areas.

OVERVIEW

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) electronic reporting rule requires certain establishments to report information electronically from their OSHA Forms 300, 300A and 301. Under the rule, the first electronic reports were due on July 1, 2017.

However, on Nov. 24, 2017, OSHA issued a new final rule officially delaying the first electronic reporting deadline to Dec. 15, 2017. Affected establishments will need to submit their reports through the Injury Tracking Application (ITA) website by that time or face possible OSHA penalties.

ACTION STEPS

Affected establishments must create an account on the ITA website and submit information from their 2016 OSHA 300A form by December15, 2017.

Other deadlines under the electronic reporting rule remain unaltered. Therefore, affected establishments should begin their preparations to submit information from all 2017 OSHA forms by July 1, 2018.

OSHA’s electronic reporting rule affects establishments that:

Are already required to create and maintain OSHA injury and illness records and have 250 or more employees;

Receive a specific request from OSHA to create, maintain and submit electronic records, even if they would otherwise be exempt from OSHA recordkeeping requirements.

The electronic reporting rule applies to establishments, not employers. An employer may have several worksites or establishments. In these situations, some establishments may be affected while others are not.

To determine whether an establishment is affected, employers must determine each establishment’s peak employment during the calendar year. During this determination, employers must count every individual that worked at that establishment, regardless of whether he or she worked full-time, part-time, or was a temporary or seasonal worker.

Finally, a firm with more than one establishment may submit establishment-specific data for multiple establishments.

Reporting Requirements

The data an employer must submit and the timeline for submitting this information to OSHA depends on the establishment size.

Establishments with 250 or more employees will be required to submit information from their OSHA Forms 300A, 300 and 301. However, in 2017, these establishments will only be required to submit data from their 300A Form. Establishments in high-risk industries with between 20 and 249 employees will be required to submit information only from their OSHA Form 300A.

For the first reporting year, the deadline has been delayed to Dec. 15, 2017. However, the final rule that delayed the first deadline did not alter subsequent deadlines, so reporting deadlines for 2018, 2019 and beyond remain as shown in the table above.

Submitting the Report

The ITA is a secure website that OSHA created specifically for the data required by the electronic reporting rule. The ITA allows employers three options to submit their reports:

OSHA-approved State Plans

The final rule required OSHA-approved State Plans to adopt the electronic rule or “substantially identical” requirements within six months of the final rule’s publication date. The final rule was published on May 12, 2016. This means that OSHA-approved State Plans have the authority to adopt reporting requirements that go above and beyond what is required by the federal rule. For this reason, establishments located in OSHA-approved State Plan jurisdictions should consult with their local OSHA offices to make sure they are satisfying all electronic reporting requirements.

However, the following OSHA-approved State Plans have not yet adopted the requirement to submit injury and illness reports electronically:

Similarly, state and local government establishments in IL, ME, NJ and NY are not currently required to submit their data through the reporting website.

From Kaiser Health News, here is the latest: an interview with Dr. Mary Meengs, medical director at the Humboldt Independent Practice Association, on curbing opioid addiction through the reduction of prescription painkillers.

Dr. Mary Meengs remembers the days, a couple of decades ago, when pharmaceutical salespeople would drop into her family practice in Chicago, eager to catch a moment between patients so they could pitch her a new drug.

Now living in Humboldt County, Calif., Meengs is taking a page from the pharmaceutical industry’s playbook with an opposite goal in mind: to reduce the use of prescription painkillers.

Meengs, medical director at the Humboldt Independent Practice Association, is one of 10 California doctors and pharmacists funded by Obama-era federal grants to persuade medical colleagues in Northern California to help curb opioid addiction by altering their prescribing habits.

She committed this past summer to a two-year project consisting of occasional visits to medical providers in California’s most rural areas, where opioid deaths and prescribing rates are high.

“I view it as peer education,” Meengs said. “They don’t have to attend a lecture half an hour away. I’m doing it at [their] convenience.”

This one-on-one, personalized medical education is called “academic detailing” — lifted from the term “pharmaceutical detailing” used by industry salespeople.

Detailing is “like fighting fire with fire,” said Dr. Jerry Avorn, a Harvard Medical School professor who helped develop the concept 38 years ago. “There is some poetic justice in the fact that these programs are using the same kind of marketing approach to disseminate helpful evidence-based information as some [drug] companies were using … to disseminate less helpful and occasionally distorted information.”

Avorn noted that detailing has also been used to persuade doctors to cut back on unnecessary antibiotics and to discourage the use of expensive Alzheimer’s disease medications that have side effects.

Kaiser Permanente, a large medical system that operates in California, as well as seven other states and Washington, D.C., has used the approach to change the opioid-prescribing methods of its doctors since at least 2013. (Kaiser Health News is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)

In California, detailing is just one of the ways in which state health officials are attempting to curtail opioid addiction. The state is also expanding access to medication-assisted addiction treatment under a different, $90 million grant through the federal 21st Century Cures Act.

The total budget for the detailing project in California is less than $2 million. The state’s Department of Public Health oversees it, but the money comes from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through a program called “Prevention for States,” which provides funding for 29 states to help combat prescription drug overdoses.

The California doctors and pharmacists who conduct the detailing conversations are focusing on their peers in the three counties hardest hit by opioid addiction: Lake, Shasta and Humboldt.

They arrive armed with binders full of facts and figures from the CDC to help inform their fellow providers about easing patients off prescription painkillers, treating addiction with medication and writing more prescriptions for naloxone, a drug that reverses the toxic effects of an overdose.

“Academic detailing is a sales pitch, an evidence-based … sales pitch,” said Dr. Phillip Coffin, director of substance-use research at San Francisco’s Department of Public Health — the agency hired by the state to train the detailers.

In an earlier effort, Coffin said, his department conducted detailing sessions with 40 San Francisco doctors, who have since increased their prescriptions of naloxone elevenfold.

“One-on-one time with the providers, even if it was just three or four minutes, was hugely beneficial,” Coffin said. He noted that the discussions usually focused on specific patients, which is “way more helpful” than talking generally about prescription practices.

One recent afternoon, Meengs paid a visit during the lunch hour to Fortuna Family Medical Group in Fortuna, a town of about 12,000 people in Humboldt County.

“Anybody here ever known somebody, a patient, who passed away from an overdose?” Meengs asked the group — a physician, two nurses and a physician assistant — who gathered around her in the waiting room, which they had temporarily closed to patients.

“I think we all do,” replied the physician, Dr. Ruben Brinckhaus.

Brinckhaus said about half the patients at the practice have a prescription for an opioid, anti-anxiety drug or other controlled substance. Some of them had been introduced to the drugs years ago by other prescribers.

Dr. Ruben Brinckhaus says his small family practice in Fortuna, Calif., has been trying to wean patients off opiates. (Pauline Bartolone/California Healthline)

Meengs’ main goal was to discuss ways in which the Fortuna group could wean its patients off opioids. But she was not there to scold or lecture them. She asked the providers what their challenges were, so she could help them overcome them.

Meengs will keep making office calls until August 2019 in the hope that changes in the prescribing behavior of doctors will eventually help tame the addiction crisis.

In this month's compliance overview, we're going to take a look at the final rule on electronic logging devices for commercial motor vehicles.

On Dec. 16, 2015, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (FMCSA) published a final rule for electronic logging devices (ELDs) for commercial motor vehicles (CMVs). The final rule prohibits certain drivers from operating a CMV without an ELD.

The final rule also includes requirements regarding supporting documentation for hours-of-service (HOS) records and measures to prevent driver harassment that could result from the mandatory use of ELDs.

The FMCSA has released Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to provide plain language information regarding the ELD rule. This Compliance Bulletin contains the FAQs provided by the FMCSA.

We're sure you've seen it trending. Here is the latest on President Trump's new hire, Alex Azar of Eli Lilly & Co - the U.S.A.'s new head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

(Bloomberg) – President Donald Trump named former Eli Lilly & Co. executive Alex Azar to lead the Department of Health and Human Services after agency’s past chief resigned amid blowback over his taxpayer-funded private jet travel.

“Happy to announce, I am nominating Alex Azar to be the next HHS Secretary. He will be a star for better healthcare and lower drug prices!” Trump tweeted Monday.

If confirmed, Azar will take over the administration’s management of the Affordable Care Act. Trump and Congressional Republicans have called to repeal the health law, and the administration has taken steps to destabilize it, such as cutting funding for some programs and refusing to pay subsidies to health insurers. He’ll also be a key figure on drug costs.

Bloomberg/file photo

Trump has been highly critical of the drug industry, saying that pharmaceutical companies are “getting away with murder” and threatening to use the federal government’s buying power to bring down prices.

Drug Costs

However he’s taken no concrete action yet to do much on prices, and the former drug executive’s appointment may continue the trend of strong talk but little action, said Spencer Perlman, director of health-care research at Veda Partners, a policy analysis firm.

“It is very unlikely the administration will take aggressive regulatory actions to control prescription drug prices,” Perlman said in a note to clients Monday. “The administration’s tepid response to drug pricing has not matched the president’s heated rhetoric.”

Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, a consulting firm, also didn’t think Azar represented a change in direction on pharmaceutical policy. “His appointment will not change the president’s rhetoric,” Mendelson said in a phone interview.

Before his time at Lilly, Azar served as deputy secretary at HHS under President George W. Bush. One former Obama administration official said that experience could help him at the agency.

“While we certainly differ in a number of important policy areas, I have reason to hope he would make a good HHS secretary,” said Andy Slavitt, who ran the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the last administration and who has been a frequent critic of efforts to derail Obamacare. Slavitt said he hoped Azar would “avoid repeating this mistakes of his predecessor over-politicizing Americans’ access to health care.”

Running Obamacare

Azar, who ran Indianapolis-based Lilly’s U.S. operations until earlier this year, has been an advocate for more state flexibility under Obamacare. That matches up with what Republicans have pushed for, such as in a seemingly stalled bipartisan bill to fund insurer subsidies that help lower-income people with health costs.

As secretary, Azar would have broad authority over the program.

“I’m not one to say many good things about Obamacare, but one of the nice things in it is it does give a tremendous amount authority to the secretary,” Azar said during an interview with Bloomberg TV in June. “There are still changes that can be made to make it work a little better than it has been.”

There are signs that the law is gaining popular support despite the repeal efforts. In recent state elections in Virginia, Democrats won a competitive governors race that saw health care emerge as a top issue. In Maine, residents voted to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Early enrollment in Obamacare plans earlier this month was also up considerably compared to last year.

Trump’s first HHS secretary, Tom Price, resigned in September after his extensive use of private and military jets at taxpayer expense was revealed. Azar must be approved by the Senate.

Senate Confirmation

Senator Orrin Hatch, who heads the Senate Finance Committee that will review Azar’s nomination, called on Trump’s pick to help “right the wrongs of this deeply flawed law.”

“For too long, hardworking, middle-class families have been forced to bear the brunt of Obamacare’s failures in the form of higher premiums and fewer choices,” Hatch said in a statement.

Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the panel, said he would closely scrutinize Azar’s record.

“At every turn, the president has broken his promises to American families to lower health care costs, expand access, and bring down the high price of prescription drugs,” Wyden said in a statement.

Azar left Lilly in January, several months after another senior executive was named to succeed then-CEO John Lechleiter. A lawyer by training, Azar previously clerked for Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

1. Mental Health Parity reg changes enforced

Beginning January 1, 2018, plans that require “fail first” or “step therapy” could violate the Parity Act’s “non-quantitative treatment limitation” (NQTL) rules. Under the NQTL rules, plans can’t be more restrictive for mental health/substance abuse benefits than they are for medical/surgical ones.

Here’s an example of a fail-first strategy: Requiring mental health or addiction patients to try an intensive outpatient program before admission to an inpatient treatment if the same restriction doesn’t apply to medical/surgical benefits.

2. New Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) template

Under the ACA, plans were required to start using the new SBC template on or after April 1, 2017.

For calendar year plans, that means this is the first enrollment with the new template, which includes new coverage examples and updates about cost-sharing. You can find more details on and instructions for the new form here: bit.ly/temp544

3. Women’s preventive care

The Women’s Preventive Services Guidelines were updated for 2018 calendar plans to include a number of items that must be covered without any cost-sharing. The list includes breast cancer screenings for average-risk women, screenings for cervical cancer, diabetes mellitus and more.

Premium renewal rates (the comparison of similar plan rates year over year) for employer sponsored health insurance rose an average of 6.6%—a significant increase from the five-year average increase of 5.6%, according to the 2017 United Benefit Advisors (UBA) Health Plan Survey, released today. Two states saw record premium increases: Connecticut saw a 24% increase in premiums in 2017, up to $655 from $530; New York also saw a large increase of 14%, up to $712 in 2017 over $624 in 2016.

On the other side, some states saw decreases in premiums, such as Arizona and Washington which saw 2% and 10% decreases, respectively.

Average employee premiums for all employer-sponsored plans rose from $509 in 2016 for single coverage to $532 in 2017 and from $1,236 to $1,272 for family coverage (a 4.5% and 3% increase respectively). Average annual total costs per employee increased from $9,727 to $9,935. However, the employee share of total costs rose 5% from $3,378 to $3,550, while the employer’s share rose less than 1%, from $6,350 to $6,401.

“Premiums have been holding relatively steady the last few years. And while this year’s increases are not astronomical, their departure from the trend does warrant attention. To mitigate these rising costs, employers are shifting more premium onto employees, offering more lower-cost consumer directed health plans (CDHPs) and health maintenance organization (HMO) plans, increasing out-of-network deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, and leveraging continued extensions on the ability to “grandmother,” says Peter Weber, President of UBA. “We’ve also seen reductions in prescription drug coverage to defray increasing costs even further.”

Prescription Drug Plans—For a second year, prescription drug plans with four or more tiers are exceeding the number of plans with one to three tiers. Almost three-quarters (72.6%) of prescription drug plans have four or more tiers, while 27.4% have three or fewer tiers. Even more surprising is that the number of six-tier plans has surged, accounting for 32% of all plans, when only 2% of plans were using this design only a year ago.

Out-of-Pocket Costs—Median in-network deductibles for singles and families across all plans remain steady at $2,000 and $4,000, respectively. Single out-of-network median deductibles saw a 13% increase in 2016, and a 17.6% increase in 2017, from $3,400 to $4,000. Both singles and families are facing continued increases in median in-network out-of-pocket maximums (up by $560 and $1,000, respectively, to $5,000 and $10,000).

Self-Funding—The number of employers using self-funding grew 48% for employers with 25 to 49 employees in 2017 (5.8% of plans), and 13.4% for employers with 50 to 99 employees (9.3% of plans).

Overall, 12.8% of all plans are self-funded, up from 12.5% in 2016, while almost two-thirds (60.9%) of all large employer (1,000+ employees) plans are self-funded.

“Self-funding has always been an attractive option for large groups, but we see self-funding becoming increasingly desirable to all employers as a way to avoid various cost and compliance aspects of health care reform,” says Weber. “For small employers with healthy populations, self-funding may be particularly attractive since fully insured community-rated plans under the ACA don’t give them any credit for a healthy group.”

About the 2017 UBA Health Plan Survey
The 2017 UBA Health Plan Survey contains the validated responses of 20,099 health plans and 11,221 employers, who cumulatively employ over two and a half million employees and insure more than five million total lives. While other surveys primarily target large employers, the focus of the UBA survey is to report results that are applicable to the small and mid-size companies that represent the overwhelming majority of the nation’s employers, while also including a mix of large companies in rough proportion to their actual prevalence, nationally. This is an important distinction compared to other national surveys.

On the evening of October 12, 2017, President Trump announced that cost-sharing reductions for low-income Americans in relation to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) would be stopped. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has confirmed that payments will be stopped immediately. It is anticipated at least some state attorney generals will file lawsuits to block the ending of the subsidy payments, with California Attorney General Xavier Becerra stating he is prepared to file a lawsuit to protect the subsidies.

Background

Individuals with household modified adjusted gross incomes (AGI) in excess of 100 percent but not exceeding 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) may be eligible for cost-sharing reductions for coverage purchased through health insurance exchanges if they meet a variety of criteria. Cost-sharing reductions are limited to coverage months for which the individual is allowed a premium tax credit. Eligibility for cost-sharing reductions is based on the tax year for which advanced eligibility determinations are made by HHS, rather than the tax year for which premium credits are allowed. In 2015, cost-sharing subsides reduced out-of-pocket (OOP) limits:

· Less than 100 percent but not exceeding 200 percent of FPL: OOP limits reduced by two-thirds
· Greater than 200 percent but not exceeding 300 percent of FPL: OOP limits reduced by one-half
· Greater than 300 percent but not exceeding 400 percent of FPL: OOP limits reduced by one-third

After 2015, the base percentages were shifted based on a percentage of average per capita health insurance premium increases. The cost-sharing reduction is paid directly to the insurer, and is automatically applied when eligible individuals enroll in a silver plan on the Marketplace or Exchange.

The cost-sharing reduction is not the same as the "advance premium tax credit" which is also available to individuals with household modified AGIs of at least 100 percent and not exceeding 400 percent of the FPL.

Impact on Employers

There is no direct impact to employers at this time. However, employers with fully insured health plans might see group health plan rate increases in future years as insurance companies work to make up for the loss of revenue.